Anorexie II

An experiment transposing a painting by the artist Jacqueline Bosson into film. A particularly delicate exercise which consists of preserving the quality of both the colors and the range of blacks and whites, of directing the gaze to a single part of an ensemble predefined by one of the many factors involved in “making visible”, without turning away from the the fact that one’s attention is liberated from the noises and distractions of the gallery, of the museum, of the world… — different and similar from those the screening room — an inevitability of light.

I saw people flee in fright before the force of Chromaticité I, during which I remained fastened to my seat, in the clutches of fear. The last image, the screen turns white: I glance at my neighbour, immobilised just as myself. (Bernard Weidmann, Rhizome Hérétique, 1980)

The first part of the Carolyn Carlson cycle. Between her and herself. Three images of the dance are repeated, come up against opacities that do not let themselves be crossed, are lost in transparencies from which there is no reflection. The sound describes their inevitable journey: this motionless movement.

First part of the trilogy on language, on the birth of writing.

Portrait. She dances in the center of her area. Obscure to the look. She abandons us to her limit. Turn. Count the chips. Conjugate. Turn on yourself, in a blind echo. Cross the already deserted space.

Found footage, edited from international news footage.

A test film shot in super 8 mm and 16 mm inflated for copying. A first film "long", made with nothing, "hypnotic", slow and repetitive as it was at the time fascinating and usual to do, as an exercise in style mandatory. A period film.

The filmmaker intersects the flow of traffic on narrow streets and on the canals of a European city.

Large visual elaborations of Kirchhofer means most simple devices and childish in cinema archeology, Thaumatrope the Praxinoscope, all optical toys. This fundamental investigation of the batch becomes particularly clear in Sensitométrie III (Sensitometry III), where work on the range is very pure because it is accentuated by the open opposition between positive and negative. But the difference is that, where other devices seeking forms of regularity and stability to swallow motionless in the mobile, film Kirchhofer rather explore all possible rhythms, so to enhance the irregularity, difference, discontinuous. The parade always comes up against the still image, continuity serves monumentalize Meanwhile, the optical illusion is stripped and the beauties of the irregular explode. Nicole Brenez - Portrait Arte - May 2006

SENSITOMETRIE V, the first film that I saw by K., bored me to death… A black screen, a few rare profiles of a window… I couldn’t take any more, so I left the theater, unable to wait until the twenty-minute “duration” of the film had elapsed… Bernard WEIDMANN - RHIZOME HERETIQUE - March 3rd, 1980.

First film made outside of pure animation, with all that it is possible to put and omit in a first film essay, which contains authoritatively - and without knowing it at the beginning - images made by others long before and not the least, with trifles that make a whole.

There are also film-shots, like "L'Envers", admirable montage between 1988 and 2005 from the voice of Jean-Luc Godard, Bob Dylan or Marlon Brando. (Nicole Brenez - Portrait Arte - May 2006.)

To approach a photo printed by Patrice Kirchhofer is frightening. I have long seen in them an agression by negligence. With patience, I found in them the solution that fancy lab prints could not convey. Patrice K manipulates the marks made irrationally, entirely by chance. When being photocopied, an overexposed photo reacts better than a carefully made print. It is this image, the photocopy, that K. used for his film. His films are characterized by accidental marks. And K. knows how to relate to one mark rather than another. (Bernard WEIDMANN - RHIZOME HERETIQUE - March 3rd, 1980.)

This film is an audio interview of Louis Skorecki, filmmaker and film critic for Cahiers du cinéma, by Patrice Kirchhofer and Gérard Courant. This interview, later put into images by Gérard Courant, is centred around the feature film Eugénie de Franval, based on Sade's novella, which Louis Skorecki shot in 1974 and which was awarded the prize of "la porte entrouverte" at the festival of young cinema in Toulon in 1975 by the jury composed of Marguerite Duras, Shuji Terayama and Dominique Noguez.

During a vacation, Gilles Deleuze questions the concept of "knowing how to swim" and the relationship with the wave.